Mastering the VC Game – A Book Review

July 5, 2010

I saw Jeffrey Bussgang at TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC (CiviGuard was a demo pit participant there). He was there to promote and sign his book “Mastering the VC Game”. Before he arrived, I perused through the back cover and found it to be interesting enough to put it on my future reading list mentally. However, I don’t get autographs of people I don’t know or admire, so I held off on partaking in that opportunity.

Over July 4th weekend, Jeffrey’s book arrived in the mail. CiviGuard has been working hard at getting to Minimum Viable Product level over the last 9 months and has snagged it’s first customer. Now our focus is on gaining even more traction in the public/private sector and pursuing fund raising to amplify our sales. Needless to say, the book arrived at an opportune moment.

The book is an easy read, I was able to wrap up the 235 or so pages in approximately 5 hours across two evenings. As someone who follows a bunch of the people he mentions in the book’s blogroll, a lot of the content isn’t ‘new’ per se, but it is all relevant to the newbie.

Howard Morgan, Fred Wilson, Jeff Clavier, Reid Hoffman, Mark Suster are all people entrepreneurs can learn a lot from, period.

If you haven’t seen this episode from “This Week in Start-ups”, you are missing out:

http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/twist-44-with-howard-morgan/

Watch from the 47th minute to the 1:40 mark.

As with any worthy book on mastering anything – there are nuggets of wisdom that you keep and gain from.

For me those were:

• Christoph Westphal’s journey.
• Gail Goodman’s journey.
• Jeffrey’s dad and his journey.
• Entrepreneur Idol analogy.
• Dollar bills hunched over keyboards (died laughing).
• Managing the Board, importance of trust and transparency.
• The VC world, the importance of LPs in the dynamic.
• Choosing the right VC.
• John Doerr interrogating Jeffrey

Negatives:

Jeffrey comes off more disarmed and genuine when he speaks as an entrepreneur. The tone in the book is more guarded when it comes to the VC perspective – you get a flavor for that world but the information given isn’t likely to give you “mastery” in a conversation with one. Jeffrey is still a VC, so his reluctance to singe his own fur is understandable.

Overall:

Jeffrey does a magnificent job of giving the entrepreneur a very lucid view of the dynamics at play between: LPs, VCs, Angels, Entrepreneurs, Underwriters, IPOs, Private Equity, Large Enterprises and the Customer. His interviewees and role models give the book emotion and depth – this ‘texture’ gives critical insight into the grit and determination it takes to build something game changing.

The book mentions Reid Hoffman’s famous quote:

Entrepreneurship is throwing yourself off a cliff, and building a plane on the way down

I’d like to riff on that a little bit and say:

Entrepreneurship is throwing yourself off a really big cliff, and building a plane on the way down

Translation:

Work on stuff that matters. Throw yourself off a cliff for missions that are truly game-changing and impactful. Too many get burned trying to build planes for missions that are derivative or inconsequential. That’s an awfully short cliff.

And Jeffrey – when I see you next, I’ll ask you for an autograph. Thanks for writing this book.

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